So what’s the absolutely, totally last thing you might expect to happen next?
Martian invasion?
Earthquake?
Tsunami?
Blizzard?
Katie Kim asking me to dance?
I can tell you for sure that we didn’t have any alien incidents that night. There weren’t any natural disasters either. But…
There I was, drinking my fifth—or tenth—cup of punch and pretty much minding my own business, when, out of nowhere, Katie stopped talking to Major Sherwood and started walking across the room with this odd little smile on her face.
Right.
For.
Us.
“Um… guys?” Cav said.
“I see her,” Dweebs said.
“What do we do?” Smurf asked.
Bombardier farted.
So I guess I wasn’t the only kid at Camp Wannamorra with a teeny-weeny crush on Katie, after all. You could practically hear the sweat dripping off the other guys.
And there she was—standing right in front of us.
“All right, you guys,” she said. “You can’t spend the whole night holding up the walls. Who’s going to dance with me?”
“Uh…” Cav said.
“Umm…” Bombardier said.
“Well…” Smurf said.
You know that expression “opportunity knocks”? It was knocking, all right, but none of us knew how to answer the door.
On the inside, I was thinking, Yes, yes, yes… I’ll dance with you, Katie! But on the outside, I was still just trying to get my mouth to work.
I knew there wasn’t much time. One of the other guys was going to speak up at any second.
This was huge. I was going to go for it.
So I took a deep breath. I looked Katie in the eye.
And I said, “I’ll d—”
Unfortunately, that’s as far as I got. Just “I’ll d—”
Because then I felt this annoying little tap on my shoulder. Kind of a familiar tap. Who dat?
“Hey, Rafe! Do you want to dance with me?”
It was Georgia, showing up at exactly the wrong moment, of all moments in the history of moments. Of course. That’s my sister’s specialty.
“Yeah, suuuure,” I told her. Like that was ever going to happen without a court order.
Except Katie didn’t hear me say “Yeah, sure” like “No way.” She heard me say “Yeah, sure” like “YEAH! SURE!”
“Omigosh, that is the sweetest thing,” she said. “You guys are brother and sister, right? I wish my brother had been that nice to me when I was your age. Rafe, you’re a real class act, you know that?”
I think I said, “Mrglph.”
This was like the definition of an impossible situation. I either had to show Katie that I was the exact opposite of the good guy she thought I was. Or I had to dance with my sister and look as pathetic as it’s possible to look at a camp dance.
What would you have done?
You sure about that?
